The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, today met Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev and other senior Russian officials in Kaliningrad and then returned to IAEA’s Vienna headquarters where he held a press conference. This followed his detailed discussions earlier in the week with senior Ukrainian government officials at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) on the concrete steps that need to be taken to deliver urgent technical assistance for nuclear safety and security in Ukraine.
Ukraine has informed the IAEA that all Russian forces have left the Chornobyl NPP, and this was confirmed by the Russian officials at today’s meeting in Kaliningrad. Ukraine has not yet reported any staff rotation at the Chornobyl NPP since 20-21 March.
Director General Grossi intends to head an IAEA assistance and support mission to the Chornobyl NPP as soon as possible. It will be the first in a series of such nuclear safety and security missions to Ukraine.
The IAEA has still not been able to confirm reports of Russian forces receiving high doses of radiation while being in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
Out of the country’s 15 operational reactors at four sites, Ukraine said eight were operating, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya NPP, three at Rivne, one at Khmelnytskyy, and two at South Ukraine. The other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance (including Unit 2 at Rivne which shut down recently), it added.
In relation to safeguards, the Agency said that the situation remained unchanged from that reported previously. The Agency was still not receiving remote data transmission from its monitoring systems installed at the Chornobyl NPP, but such data was being transferred to IAEA headquarters from the other NPPs in Ukraine.